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Four fellow Republicans are not pleased with the proposed budget of vice presidential hopeful Paul Ryan, so much so that they voted against the plan.
One of those dissenters is Representative David McKinley of West Virginia. In a flyer he distributed at the Republican National Convention McKinley stated that the budget plan “would privatize Medicare for future retirees, raise the retirement age and keep in place the Medicare cuts included in last year’s health care bill. The Congressional Budget Office determined the plan would nearly double out-of-pocket health care costs for future retirees.”
Joining McKinley in dissing the plan was Ron Paul, who is not running for any office at the moment and Congressman Walter Jones of North Carolina who is not shy about going against his party’s party line from time to time. Representative Denny Rehberg of Montana also voted against Ryan’s budget, and has even run Television ads declaring his position loud and clear.
Prominent features of the budget plan are cuts in Medicare funding as well as other spending cuts, leaving many of the rank and file Republicans feeling less than warm and fuzzy about the proposal even if they did not vote against it outright. Because the folks back home might not be so pleased with many of the cuts, Republicans lower down on the totem pole are claiming they are not responsible for what the guys at the top decide.
“The plan is the Romney plan,” said Senator John Hoeven, Republican of North Dakota. “He’s the one that’s going to drive the agenda.”
Ricky Gill is the 25-year-old Republican who is going head to head for a congressional seat in the Central Valley of California against Representative Jerry McNerney. Gill commented that he is pleased that there is “a mature conversation about the national debt” taking place, but, he added, “it would be very difficult for me to endorse any specific plan without having a seat at the table.”
House Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio never said that a November win for the Republicans would be in any way a mandate for them to embrace the Ryan-type of Medicare facelift that Ryan proposed in his plan. Boehner preferred to use energy, tax reform and other more general types of deficit reduction as examples of where to cut the fat in a future Republican budget.
